“I have some news here that will interest this squadron. Your pilot—Lieutenant Lescault—he’s alive. In Russian custody, but alive…and apparently well.”
Tommy wanted to jump for joy. Every man from the 301st in that room did, too. But something about the look on the colonel’s face threw cold water on their celebration before it could begin.
Tommy said, “That sounds like pretty good news to me, sir. Am I missing something here?”
“Yes, Captain, I think you are. Remember we were talking about games just a minute ago? Lescault being alive makes him a hostage. We just handed the Reds another damn trump card.”
Sean had spent the rest of the afternoon in Colonel Abrams’ CP, writing up the ops order for the blockade of the Pisek-Prague highway. He showed it to Captain Carpenter first; it would be his men—the men of Baker Team—who’d be executing that plan. The captain was officially the team commander now; after debriefing Lieutenant Waldner over supper, Abrams had officially written off Major Vreeland and given the command to Carpenter.
Together, he and Sean brought the ops order to the colonel for his approval. The plan was basically an ambush, utilizing well-dug-in infantry for containment of the adversary; the trap the infantry set would then be slammed shut by a highly mobile armored force. It was classic Abrams strategy, well proven in the battalion’s march across France and Germany. He approved it enthusiastically.
Then the colonel asked Sean, “Have you had chow yet, Sergeant?”
“I was heading out to get some now, sir. But one question—where the hell is the kitchen in this burg?”
“In that church down the block. Go around back. You can’t miss it.”
As he walked the cobblestones, Sean got the distinct impression he was still patrolling the streets of Berlin, as he had just a month ago. Back then, there was a free-wheeling, yet naive sense of coexistence between American and Russian soldiers, who, unlike him, hadn’t seen with their own eyes the savagery that could flare between supposed allies. But here in Pisek, that naivety was gone. The GIs and G-Ivans still mingled, though not as openly as they had in Berlin. They still bartered in souvenirs, cigarettes, and liquor, but with an air of wariness that evoked contentious negotiations between two hostile street gangs, each afraid to sacrifice one ounce of advantage to the other.
Just like it used to be with the gangs back in Brooklyn: I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine.
But if you show me just one fucking claw, you’re dead.
If was as if the changing, post-war attitudes of suspicious governments had flowed downhill to the men who did those governments’ deadly bidding. Where there had once been at least a pretense of cooperation, now there was nothing but barely suppressed hostility, which—at any moment, with just the wrong action—could be unleashed to full-blown conflict.
It’s happened before. And it’ll happen again.
Across the street, he noticed a Russian sergeant of rank equivalent to his—a starshina, or sergeant major—surveying the mix of US and Russian troops with the same distaste. Lounging against an American jeep with Soviet markings, the tall, muscular starshina casually smoked an American cigarette—a Luckie from a C ration pack—its glow a frail beacon in the grayness of dusk. His gaze fell on Sean.
The starshina motioned Come…come join me.
Sean shook his head and kept walking toward the church…and chow.
In a semblance of English, the starshina called after him: “American top sergeant, wait. We talk. Be friends…tovarisch.”
“Yeah? What’s there to talk about, pal? We ain’t friends.”
But Sean could tell he wasn’t getting through to the Russian, who’d apparently exhausted his English in that first sentence. As he turned to walk away, an American PFC approached and said, “Hey, Sarge, if you want to talk to that guy, I can translate. He can speak Polish. So can I.”
“Good. Tell him to go fuck himself in Polish, Private.”
“Why would I want to do that, Sarge? Starshina Pervitsky’s a pretty good guy. He’s making sure the Ivans around here don’t cause no trouble.”
“There ain’t no Russian good guys, Private. What’s your name?”
“Skolnicki, Sarge. Paul J. From Pittsburgh.”
Sean stood toe to toe with the Russian and they locked eyes; big men, each refusing to be intimidated by the other.
“I tell you what, Private Skolnicki, Paul J., introduce me to this palooka. Tell him my name’s Moon.”
“Oh, I know who you are, Sarge. Everybody does.”
After a brief exchange in Polish, Skolnicki said, “He says he’s very pleased to meet Master Sergeant Moon. He wants to know how long you fought the Germans.”
“Tell him three long years, all the way back to North Africa. Then ask him the same question.”
“He says he’s got you beat, Sarge. He’s been at war for four long years. And he’s got a wound for each one of those years, too.”
“Well, then, I’ve got him beat,” Sean said. He pulled up his sleeve to show the burn scars on his arm. “Tell him that’s the first one.”
Pervitsky matched Sean wound for wound, until Sean broke the tie by pulling off his tanker’s boot and then rolling down the sock to show the bullet wound to his ankle. “Tell the starshina that I got this from one of his comrades, not no goddamn Kraut.”
The Russian was surprised to hear that. He asked, “What happened to that Red Army soldier?”
Sean’s reply: “My driver shot him fucking dead.”
Pervitsky’s reaction was not what Sean expected. He merely nodded in acceptance. The words that followed were said with a convivial smile: “Serves the fucking idiot right.”
Reporter Jim Pearson had been sitting in the bar of a seedy Frankfurt hotel all evening, waiting for his phone call. He was on his third bottle of beer when the bellhop finally came looking for him and then led him to a phone booth off the lobby.
“Your call from Paris will be patched through now, Herr Pearson,” the bellhop said as the reporter tipped him with the few pfennings in his pocket.
The bellhop scowled; for all practical purposes, the coins were worthless in the rampant inflation that existed in postwar Germany. He would have preferred cigarettes as his gratuity. In the black market economy, at least he could sell them for an exorbitant price.
To Pearson’s relief, the quality of the phone line was good; he could converse with his editor in the Paris office of the Mutual News Network without having to yell. Even better, the information his editor relayed was exactly what he’d been hoping to hear.
“Mister Carmichael had to call in some favors in D.C., Jim, but he persuaded the War Department to give you your credentials back,” the editor told him.
“Okay, that’s great,” Pearson replied. “Now this is what I’m going to need for—”
The editor sensed a complete lack of contrition in his reporter’s tone, so he cut him off. “Now hold on a minute, Pearson. Before you say another word, Mister Carmichael needs to hear that you fully understand your mistake and will, from this moment on, respect all conditions that USFET establishes. He doesn’t intend to have to kiss any more Washington ass just to keep you on the payroll.”
He waited for Pearson’s reply, but there was nothing except what he took as peeved silence on the line.
“We’re serious, Jim. Let me put it another way…one more fuckup and you’re out.”
Pearson was confident it was an empty threat. He felt sure that if they fired him, it would take weeks—maybe longer—to get another reporter with his knowledge of the territory into place. The weeks ahead promised to be the most volatile since the war itself. No news agency could afford to be without its own reporter on the ground.
Sure, they could fire him—but not until after he’d scored the scoop.
And with that scoop, he could write his own ticket at any news organization he chose.
“All right, fine, Marty,” Pearson told the editor. “Tell Mister Carmichael I�
��ll be sure to kiss his feet the next time I see him. Or his ass, if he likes. But in the meantime, I’m going to need a car, a photographer, and a pile of government chits for gasoline. I’m headed to Czechoslovakia. That’s where it’s all happening.”
“I thought you wanted to go to Berlin, Jim. We’ve spent days setting up authorizations to get you through the Russian zone.”
“Forget Berlin, Marty,” Pearson replied. “My sources tell me Czechoslovakia is where it’s all going to blow up.”
Chapter Sixteen
It had been three days since Sylvie overheard Mirka’s suspicious phone call. In that time, life had gone on as normal for them at the Hotel Neuwieder, despite Sylvie watching her partner’s every move like a hawk. Mirka didn’t seem to notice the extra surveillance she’d earned, and Sylvie had uncovered nothing more to intensify the premonition she was a double agent.
If this was La Résistance, she told herself, the mere suspicion of a fellow maquis being a traitor was enough to get them executed. It would be quick, silent, and without remorse. There was too much at stake for it to be otherwise.
But Mirka knows too much. She knows my plan…and it’s the only one I’ve got.
I should have killed her already…but I still need her, at least for the time being. I just don’t speak Russian well enough to pull off this kidnapping by myself…
But I speak it well enough she can’t fool me with words alone.
So I’ll keep sleeping with one eye open…
Until I don’t need her anymore.
Sylvie had become familiar with the comings and goings of the Russian staff officers. With that knowledge, she’d shaped the details of the plan to kidnap Colonel Yanov.
“It will have to be at night,” she told Mirka. “Yanov is very regular in his nocturnal routine. Fastidious, even. We can slip the chloral hydrate into his second—and last—after-dinner brandy, and then snatch him from his room once he falls unconscious.”
“Who ever heard of a Russian who drinks brandy?” Mirka asked.
“You have, just now. I’ve watched him as I cleaned up in the bar. He’s as regular as clockwork.”
Mirka shrugged and then asked, “And you still plan to get him out of the hotel in a laundry hamper?”
“Yes,” Sylvie replied. “That’s the only way we’ll be able to move a knocked-out man out of the building and into the hands of the transporters without arousing suspicion.”
She could feel her stomach flip as she said those words. I hate that she knows the plan. But it’s necessary for now, I’m afraid.
“But how do we get the drug into his drink, Sylvie?”
She’d been waiting for this question. If Mirka really was a double agent, this would be the part that would unmask her.
“How do we drug him, Mirka? Simple. You’re going to do it.”
She’d expected Mirka to flinch at those words. She didn’t, though, merely replying, “But how?”
“We’re going to get Herr Gestler to make you a barmaid.”
“But that will look suspicious, won’t it? This hotel already has all the barmaids it needs. Someone will have to be displaced.”
Sylvie replied, “And that’s exactly what Herr Gestler will do, if he expects to be spirited out of the Russians’ grasp…and his precious mother, too.”
“But changes drive the Russians crazy! They’re suspicious of everything.”
Sylvie replied. “It’s not a change of personnel. They’ve seen you around the hotel. They know who you are.”
“But a barmaid! That’s a hideous job! Why can’t you do it? You’re the one who doesn’t seem to mind men’s hands up her skirt. Or worse.”
“Because I don’t speak Russian well enough. Too big a chance of misunderstandings. That leaves you.”
“Well, I won’t do it, and that’s that.”
“Oh, yes, you will, Mirka, because it’s already arranged.”
Mirka’s objection became rage. “You went behind my back with Gestler! You know that proper procedure on a mission like this is to do nothing without the knowledge of your partner, don’t you?”
Fixing Mirka in a piercing gaze, Sylvie replied, “I could ask you the same question.”
Mirka recoiled as if those words had struck like a punch. Sylvie was sure her partner knew she was being accused, and why:
She knows I’ve caught her red-handed doing something…maybe that phone call, maybe something else I didn’t see or hear but she thinks I did.
If I push the issue now, though, this mission is over.
That’s not an acceptable outcome. Not for me.
But just a few more days, and it will be: So long, Colonel Yanov…
And Goodbye, Mirka Dubinski.
Sylvie started out of the room. At the doorway, she said, “Just be on duty in the bar, starting tomorrow evening.”
She’d already stepped into the hallway when Mirka called out, “Wait! Come back!”
Sylvie kept walking.
She will be no problem for us.
Those words—spoken by Mirka during that overheard phone call—continued to haunt Sylvie. She still hadn’t figured out who she and us were; putting names to those terms could mean the difference between life and death.
My life, my death.
Or perhaps they meant nothing, innocent words merely heard out of context.
That morning in the hotel’s third-floor hallway she’d overheard another conversation, this one between two Russian officers. She couldn’t follow every word they said, but she had no trouble getting the gist: Herr Gestler was intending to bill the Russians for the telephone services the hotel was providing.
One officer had asked the other if the Army should simply install their own landline system. It would be far cheaper.
But then they both smiled and shook their heads. What they said next made no sense to Sylvie until one of them took the papers in his hand and, with a great flourish, tore them to shreds. Only then did she have the context to piece together the words she had understood with those she hadn’t:
The stupid little hotelier doesn’t yet realize we’re not going to pay him for anything, let alone his telephones. These wretched Germans had no trouble understanding the subservience of a conquered nation when they burned their way through Mother Russia. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, they will have to learn it all over again.
Then, something was said which she understood immediately: Pay? Who do they think we are, the Americans?
As she walked by, one of the officers grabbed her roughly by the arm. He said, “We should take advantage of this service, too, don’t you think, Yuri?”
“Quit it, Nikolai,” the other replied, “or you’ll have Yanov crawling up your ass. Remember what happened to the last officer who got caught fraternizing with the German pigs? Besides, the zampolit considers this one to be his. Better leave her alone…unless you’re fond of Siberia.”
He released his grip on her and the two officers walked off, laughing boisterously.
So Yanov considers me his for the taking? That’s news to me…but very convenient to know.
But wait…they talked of telephone billing. The switchboard must keep a record of who uses the telephones in this hotel. Otherwise, how could they bill for the service?
And if there’s a record of every call, perhaps I can figure out who Mirka was talking to when I overheard her.
The switchboard operator on duty was a nasty, middle-aged woman named Frau Bachmann. She considered herself quite superior to the other members of the hotel staff, especially a newcomer like Sylvie. She’d even been overheard referring to herself—with all seriousness—as manager of communications.
When Sylvie poked her head into the switchboard room, Frau Bachmann barked, “Get your filthy nose out of here this instant. This is no business of yours. Go back to cleaning up after the Russian scum.”
Sylvie jumped back into the hall, but not before she’d gotten a good look at the setup. There was an open ledg
er book on the switchboard’s desk; Frau Bachmann was writing in it.
That must be the call log. All I’ve got to do is get that old cow away from the switchboard for a few minutes.
That would prove easier than she imagined. Frau Bachmann called out, “You there…maid…get back in here.”
Sylvie stood in the doorway, but the woman barked, “Come closer. I need something.”
She held up an elaborate mug, handing it to Sylvie. “Take this to the kitchen, and have them fill it with schwarztee. It better be piping hot, too.” Then, twisting her face into an insincere smile, she added, “There’s a good little girl.”
In the kitchen, under the cook’s complicit gaze, she not only filled the mug with schwarztee—black tea—but she placed the ceramic mug in the scorching hot oven for a full minute. Wrapping it in a thick cloth napkin, she hurried back to the switchboard room. Just before placing it before Frau Bachmann, she ditched the napkin, biting her lip at the pain but still managing to smile.
But a little pain should be worth it.
“Be careful,” Sylvie said sweetly. “It’s very hot.”
Grabbing the mug with both hands, the woman replied, “Oh, I like it HAAA…”
She’d managed to lift it off the desk just a few inches before the pain seared into her palms.
Frau Bachman dropped the mug into her lap, spilling its steaming contents all over her skirt. As she jumped from her rolling chair, the mug fell to the floor, smashing to pieces.
In the moment before she fled the room, Frau Bachmann shrieked, “YOU STUPID PROVINCIAL COW! I’LL HAVE YOU SACKED FOR THIS.”
Sylvie pretended to be upset until the woman ran off. But once the sound of Frau Bachmann’s footsteps faded, she began to scan the phone log, flipping the pages back three days until she came to the day in question: August 8. She retrieved the napkin; she’d need it to pretend she was cleaning up the mess if someone caught her with the log.
She worked her way down the recorded calls, almost all to the same Berlin switchboard. She’d worked a switchboard before during a maquis sabotage operation. This one didn’t look much different. In a few moments, she’d found the jack to connect to that Berlin switchboard listed in the log. She patched into it and spun the ringer’s crank.
This Fog of Peace (Moon Brothers WWII Adventure Series Book 4) Page 16
